Choose a Local As Your Tour Guide in Asia

Get the one-of-a-kind experience, from river fishing in Cambodia to knife-making in Laos.

Finding unforgettable, only-in-a-foreign-country experiences just got a lot easier thanks to Backstreet Academy, an Asia-centric organization that democratizes the tourism industry in developing nations by connecting travelers with expert locals they'd never be able to meet on their own.

“We noticed that locals who had the potential to offer unique experiences to travelers weren't able to do so either because of language barriers or the lack of access to technology in marketing to tourists,” says Anil Gurung, Backstreet Academy’s COO. Gurung, along with his co-founders Jamon Mok and Akash Gurung, launched the company in March 2014 to give foreigners access to wonderfully exclusive activities while helping the locals get in on the tourism action. The initial seed of the idea came when Mok went on a trip to Kathmandu, Nepal. There, Mok learned the basics of wood mask carving from an artisan he randomly met in an alley in the tourist district of Thamel. "This is what I wish travel was like, every single time," he says.

With operations in eight Asian countries, Backstreet's mission is largely steeped in cultural education. Adventures you can sign up for include a knife-making workshop in Luang Prabang, river fishing in Phnom Penh, or learning how to fashion totes out cement-carrier bags in Siem Reap. And if these sound wildly off the radar, it’s because they are—especially when the people who can offer these experiences don’t speak very much English. Even for Backstreet, finding these opportunities requires extensive on-the-ground legwork, sometimes with NGOs and sometimes on their own.

"We literally parachute into the little towns and villages and start sniffing out people who would like to do this, chatting random villagers up with our local staff,’ Gurung explains. "One leads to another and occasionally you find an entire village of masters who have been practicing their craft for centuries, then you know you’ve struck gold!" Since these areas are relatively untouched by tourism and don't have infrastructure in place, that's where Backstreets comes in: They will take photos for the locals so that they can be posted online or they can provide help with the experience descriptions, in addition to providing translators and coordinators on the excursions so that things go seamlessly. Gurung insists that their team is only involved with the back-end work. They want the local experts to perform freely. Gurung adds, “Our main goal is to find experiences that can highlight the heritage of a place and help travelers appreciate tradition, skills and foster understanding between people of different cultures.”